On World AIDS Day this year, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was showcased on the White House South Lawn for the first time in history. In a poignant speech, Biden honoured the lives commemorated in the quilt, calling it “the largest community art project in the entire world” and a powerful testament to the lives lost to HIV/AIDS.  

The quilt, conceived in 1985 by activists Cleve Jones and Mike Smith, began with a single panel and has grown to encompass over 50,000 panels honouring 110,000 individuals. “This quilt weighs 54 tons,” Biden remarked during the memorial at the White House, “and tells the tragic stories of brothers who died too soon, mothers who contracted AIDS at childbirth, friends and partners who lost loved ones — and so many more.”

He acknowledged the quilt’s enduring impact: “The first threads of this quilt stitched nearly 40 years ago… [are] fully woven into the fabric and history of America.”

 

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The next day, the Library of Congress announced the release of a newly digitised collection of over 125,000 items documenting the lives of those memorialised in the quilt. The collection includes letters, diaries, photographs, obituaries, and prayer cards, offering an intimate glimpse into the personal stories behind the panels. The digital archive complements the Library’s existing online version of the quilt, ensuring these stories remain accessible to future generations.  

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden called the collection “a major milestone in our preservation efforts,” emphasising its role in safeguarding the legacy of those lost to the epidemic. While records older than 25 years are available digitally, more recent records and other materials can be accessed onsite at the Folklife Reading Room. The AIDS Memorial Quilt is permanently maintained by the National AIDS Memorial Grove (NAMG), a non-profit organisation in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.  

Cleve Jones, a longtime LGBTQ+ activist, conceived the idea for the quilt in 1985 during a candlelight tribute to assassinated politician Harvey Milk and then-San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. At the time, the AIDS epidemic had already claimed over 1,000 lives. Jones asked attendees to write the names of loved ones lost to AIDS on poster boards, which were then displayed on a federal building in San Francisco.  

Reflecting on that moment in a 2017 interview, Jones said, “I thought to myself, it looks like some kind of quilt. And it was such a warm and comforting and Middle American traditional family values sort of symbol. And I thought, ‘This is the symbol we should take.’”  

Though initially dismissed by some as an impractical idea, the quilt has since become a profound and enduring symbol of the epidemic, drawing attention to the human toll of AIDS and the ongoing fight against HIV.